Sloane Bennett stood in front of the mirror in her dorm room, tilting her head left, then right. The cream-colored knit sweater hugged her shoulders just right—the one Mason had looked at twice last November when she'd worn it to his apartment. She remembered the way his eyes had trailed down her collarbone, a slow possessive drag she'd mistaken for adoration.

Forty minutes. That's how long she'd spent on her makeup. Piper had watched from her bed, laptop open, one eyebrow raised the entire time.

"He remembers, right?" Piper had asked. "The signing? M.K. Blackburn?"

Sloane had capped her mascara and turned. "I reminded him two nights ago. He said the weekend was clear." She'd said it lightly, confidently. Like she wasn't counting on her fingers the number of times Mason had said "clear" and then disappeared into a haze of whiskey.

That had been two hours ago. Now, standing on the sidewalk outside Mason's apartment building, October wind cutting through her thin jacket, she felt the first pinprick of something cold settling beneath her ribs.

She'd texted him when she left campus. *On my way. See you at 10?* No reply. Sent another when she got off the bus. *Mason?* Read at 9:47. No reply.

She pressed the buzzer. Once. Twice. Nothing.

Her key turned in the lock before she could overthink it—he'd given it to her in June, after they'd been dating four months. *"You should always be able to get in,"* he'd said, his mouth against her neck, his hands already pushing up her shirt. She'd felt chosen then.

Now the key felt heavy in her palm.

The living room was dark. Heavy curtains drawn against the morning light. She stepped inside and her foot caught something soft—a blazer? No. A shirt. A woman's blouse, pale pink, buttons gaping, discarded on the floor like it had been peeled off in a hurry.

Her stomach dropped into ice water.

She moved deeper into the apartment, past the coffee table where two wine glasses sat, one tipped over, the dark stain spreading across the wood like a wound. A woman's handbag—crocodile leather, expensive—lay open on the floor, lipstick tube rolled halfway across the carpet.

A laugh drifted from the bedroom. Low. Feminine. Then Mason's voice, a low murmur she couldn't make out. More laughter.

Sloane stood in the center of the living room, her hands at her sides, her fingers curling into her palms. She should leave. She should turn around and walk out and never look back. But her feet wouldn't move.

The bedroom door opened.

A woman stepped out, pulling up the zipper of her jeans, her hair tangled and sticking to the corner of her mouth. Her lipstick was smeared—a blurry red stain across her bottom lip that made Sloane's stomach turn. She was wearing a gray T-shirt. Deep gray, soft from washing, the collar slightly stretched from being pulled over a head too large for the size.

The same T-shirt Sloane had bought for Mason last Christmas. She remembered picking it out, running her fingers over the fabric, thinking how it would look against his shoulders. How she'd seen his face when he'd opened it—a flash of surprise that faded too quickly into "Thanks, babe," before he'd reached for the next gift.

The woman's eyes found Sloane's. For a beat, neither of them moved. Then the woman's face went slack with recognition—not recognition of *her*, but recognition of what she represented. Girlfriend. Other woman. The one who wasn't supposed to be here.

"Oh, shit," the woman breathed.

She grabbed her handbag off the floor, scooping the lipstick in with her hand. She didn't apologize. She just ducked her head and fled toward the door, barefoot, heels clutched in one hand, the T-shirt—*her T-shirt*—billowing behind her as she disappeared.

The door clicked shut.

Sloane stood alone in the living room, the faint sound of the woman's footsteps echoing down the stairwell. Then silence.

Mason appeared in the bedroom doorway. Shirtless. Hair rumpled. His chest was bare, and there, across his neck, were three parallel scratches, red and raised and unmistakable. Claw marks.

He looked at her, and for a moment—just a moment—she saw something like panic flicker across his face. Then it hardened into something else. Defensiveness. "Sloane."

She didn't move. "You were supposed to be at the signing with me today." Her voice came out flat. "You said you'd come with me. You promised."

Mason ran a hand through his hair. "I was going to call you. I got caught up—"

"You got caught up." She felt the words sit on her tongue, heavy as stones. "You got caught up with a woman in your bed. In the T-shirt I bought you."

"It's not what it looks like." His voice had an edge to it now. The same edge he used when he'd forgotten their anniversary. When he'd shown up two hours late to her thesis defense, smelling like bourbon, swaying slightly in the back of the lecture hall. "I had a few drinks last night—"

"You're always having a few drinks."

He stepped toward her. "Sloane, let me explain."

"Explain what?" She held up a hand, palm out. "Explain how you've been drinking for eight months? Explain how you missed my birthday because you were 'tired,' how you missed my defense because you 'lost track of time'? I counted, Mason. I counted every time you chose something else over me. I was just too stupid to stop counting."

His jaw tightened. "You're being dramatic—"

"You don't even know what day it is."

The words came out like a blade. She watched them hit him, watched the confusion flicker behind his eyes. "What are you talking about?"

She reached up and pulled her earrings off. Twin silver studs, simple, elegant. He'd given them to her in February. She'd worn them every single day since. Every morning, she'd touched her left ear before leaving her room, a ritual she'd never told him about—a small private acknowledgment that she was *his*.

She held them out, balanced on her palm. "When did you buy these?"

He stared at them, his brow furrowing. "I—I don't know. Sometime last year."

"February fourteenth. You bought them on Valentine's Day at the mall kiosk while I was trying on dresses. You came back and handed me the box and said 'For later.' You didn't even wrap them."

He opened his mouth. Closed it.

"You don't remember," she said. It wasn't a question. "You don't remember when you bought them. You don't remember today. You don't remember anything that matters."

"Maybe it's not fair to expect me to remember everything—"

"I expect you to remember the day I'm supposed to meet my favorite author." Her voice cracked, but she didn't let it break. "I expect you to remember my birthday. I expect you to show up when you say you will. That's not 'everything.' That's the bare minimum."

He stepped closer, reaching for her. "Baby—"

"Don't." She stepped back, one hand raised. "Don't call me that. You lost the right to call me that the first time you touched her."

His hand dropped. The scratches on his neck caught the thin sliver of light from between the curtains. They looked obscene. Like a brand. Like evidence of everything she'd been too blind to see.

"We're over," she said.

He recoiled. "Sloane—"

"We're over, Mason. You've used up every chance I had." She looked at him—really looked. The beautiful face she'd fallen for. The eyes that could go soft and sweet when he wanted something. The mouth that had whispered promises in the dark that he'd never intended to keep. "You're not going to lose anything, Mason. You can't lose something you never valued in the first place."

She turned and walked out.

Her heels clicked on the hardwood. Past the tipped-over wine glass. Past the expensive handbag. Past the pale pink blouse she was careful not to step on.

The door closed behind her with a soft click.

She made it halfway down the stairs before her knees buckled.

She caught herself on the railing, her grip white-knuckled, and stood there in the stairwell, listening to her own breathing. It came in short, shallow gasps—not quite crying, not quite calm. Her eyes burned, but the tears wouldn't fall.

She looked down at her hands. They were shaking. Her keys were still clutched in one fist, the metal biting into her palm. Three keys: her dorm, Mason's apartment, her parents' old house that she'd never been back to. She stared at them, wondering why she was still holding the key to his apartment, and then she remembered—she'd left the earrings on the coffee table.

The silver studs. The ones she'd worn every day for eight months.

She didn't go back for them.

She walked out of the building and into the October wind. It cut through her sweater like it was made of paper, but she didn't feel it. She walked without direction, her feet carrying her past the campus gates, past the coffee shop where she and Mason used to sit, past the library where he'd never once visited her during finals week.

Her phone vibrated in her pocket. She pulled it out. Piper's name. She didn't answer.

She kept walking, past the edge of campus, down the street toward the athletic complex. The hockey rink loomed in the distance—squat and gray, its roof gleaming faintly under the clouded sky. The sound of skates cutting into ice drifted across the parking lot, muffled but sharp.

She stopped at the edge of the soccer field and stood there, staring at the rink. The last time she'd been there, she'd watched a game with Mason. He'd been late, of course. She'd sat in the stands alone for twenty minutes before he'd stumbled in, already half-drunk, shouting "Callahan!" at the ice like he was a fan and not the captain's own brother.

The rink had been loud that night. The crowd had been on their feet. And above all of it, the announcer's voice had boomed through the speakers: *"Hudson Callahan with the assist!"*

She remembered looking down at the ice and seeing him for the first time. Not as Mason's brother, not as the guy who'd never once looked at her at family dinners, not as the cold, distant figure she'd heard Mason complain about for years. She'd seen him on the ice, moving through the chaos like he owned it, and she'd understood why the crowd loved him.

Hudson Callahan. The older brother. The one Mason hated with a viciousness that had always seemed disproportionate. *"He thinks he's better than everyone,"* Mason had sneered, his face twisted over a bottle of beer. *"Ice prince. Perfect fucking Hudson."*

She'd never thought about Hudson since that night. But now, standing at the edge of the field, watching the rink's roof gleam under the cloudy sky, she thought about him.

She thought about the way he'd moved on the ice. Clean and fast, like every movement was calculated down to the millimeter. She thought about the way the crowd had shouted his name—*Callahan! Callahan!*—like a war cry. She thought about how Mason had spent his entire life trying to escape his brother's shadow, and how, at the end of the day, Mason had only succeeded in making his own shadow small.

She couldn't let him get away with it.

Not the cheating. Not the lying. Not the eight months of promises he'd broken like glass against the floor. He'd watched her pour herself into him, watched her try and fail to earn his attention, watched her shrink herself smaller and smaller so he would have room to be his worst self.

And she'd let him. She'd let him make her small.

But she didn't have to let him walk away unscathed.

She pulled out her phone, her fingers still trembling. She scrolled past Mason's name, past Piper's missed calls, past the dozen other contacts she'd collected in two years of university. She'd never saved Hudson's number. But she'd seen it on the hockey roster that one time, when Mason had asked her to pull up a game schedule.

She found it. Typed it in. Her thumb hovered over the keyboard.

The wind cut through her sweater again, and she shivered. She thought about what she was doing. About how it looked desperate—like a woman crawling to her ex's brother for some kind of payback. About how Hudson might say no. Or worse, how he might say yes, but only out of pity.

She typed two words. Sent them before she could stop herself.

*Hello.*

She stared at the screen. The message was delivered. Read. She watched the three dots appear, disappear, appear again.

Her heart hammered in her throat. She was about to lock her phone, to shove it back in her pocket and pretend this had never happened, when the screen lit up.

*Who is this?*

She typed her name. *Sloane Bennett.*

The three dots appeared. Disappeared. She waited. One minute. Two. Maybe he'd already forgotten who she was. Maybe he didn't care. Maybe—

Her phone vibrated.

*Three. Hockey rink.*

No preamble. No "How are you?" No acknowledgment that he was her ex-boyfriend's brother, that this was strange, that he had every right to tell her to fuck off.

Just a time and a place.

She stared at the screen, the wind whipping her hair across her face. She didn't know what she was going to say to him. She didn't know if she was going to ask him to help her burn Mason's life to the ground, or if she was just going to show up and see what happened.

But she knew she couldn't let Mason win.

She typed back: *I'll be there.*

She locked her phone and stood at the edge of the field, watching the rink's roof disappear into the dusk.

She didn't know she was crying until she felt the salt on her lips.

Hockey Romance：The Captain's Fake Girlfriend — Chapter 6: The First Time He Stepped In

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